> > > Mostly though, thanks to the Internet and multinational corporations, > > godawful business jargon crosses all national borders. Words and > > phrases like 'onboarding', 'stakeholders', 'mission statements', > > 'platforms', 'proactive', 'sectors' and pretty much anything > > 'strategic', for instance. > > Terms like "strategy", "mission statement" and "stakeholder" have > concrete organizational meaning. Yes, they are also often used as part > of marketing copy or organizational copy in ways that are unhelpful, > because people who aren't good writers feel the need to plug holes by > picking from the shared vocabulary of organization-speak. That doesn't > make them meaningless, anymore than the fact that every idiot has an > opinion on quantum physics makes quantum physics meaningless. >
This might be my jaded view as an engineer who came later to corporate environments/management but... when I first got trained in business practices my initial thought was "hold on, this is common sense packaged up to make it look more complicated and smarter". Since then nothing has changed that perception. I think such terminology, and indeed most of the business practices/jargons, are stagnant, limiting, inaccessible etc. I have experience of how difficult this can make communication. For example, stakeholder analysis and requirements engineering; these were all things I was explicitly doing before in my technical capacity. But in simple language, that anyone non-technical (i.e. manager) could follow. But add a layer of "corporate" and you have to follow these set layouts, set terminology - none of which is necessarily obvious to the layman. And at the end you have a longer document with wasteful overthinking that is less accessible to untrained individuals. To me it has always come across as an elitist terminology (and if you track back to the origins it does originate from the need for management to speak a different, superior, language to the grunts) that focuses on making a) work look smarter and b) cover ones ass. I think the more agile approaches will grow in adoption over the coming years, even in large corporations, and are certainly worth considering. > Where I agree with you: It's the job of any writer to make their > message accessible and understandable, where possible by using plain > language. It's probably good to maintain a healthy degree of prejudice > against "organizational jargon", just because it is so prevalent and > often used poorly. > > However, organizational development and management are serious human > endeavors that merit open-mindedness and willingness to discover and > learn on the reader's part just as much as they merit clarity and > brevity on the writer's or speaker's part. Being simplistic about the > "corporate world" is no more charming or noble than is ignorance about > any other field. I think when communicating to the outside world, businesses use jargon to stop consumers digging too much into their actions and decision making process (this is my perception from inside a company that does use such jargon). They also use it to make things sound "smart". Not necessarily in a malicious way - that is just how it is trained. When communicating with the public, as a charity, I think it is critical the WMF should make the extra step to communicate in simple language. Rather than asking them to meet you half way. I mean, I agree that encouraging open-mindedness is a good thing. But there are better ways to do it than wrap public communication up in jargon. You talk about clarity and brevity as well; it is my perception (again from having to write press releases with such nonsense in them) that the jargon simply removes any clarity you had and sacrifices understanding for brevity-as-less-words. I think this is becoming obvious to those interested in business development - with the advent of much leaner business processes (piloted by web firms and startups!). As a multi-lingual, social minded movement, the Foundation should be at the forefront of accessible business, not in the middle :) Tom _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
